Beholder (EvilHack)
e beholder 
| |
|---|---|
| Difficulty | 14 |
| Attacks |
Gaze slowing, Gaze 2d25 sleep, Gaze disintegration, Gaze stoning, Gaze 4d4 cancellation, Bite 8d8 |
| Base level | 8 |
| Base experience | 280 |
| Speed | 3 |
| Base AC | -8 |
| Base MR | 50 |
| Alignment | -10 (chaotic) |
| Frequency (by normal means) | 1 (Very rare) |
| Genocidable | No |
| Weight | 800 |
| Nutritional value | 200 |
| Size | Large |
| Resistances | cold,electricity,poison,petrification |
| Resistances conveyed | poison |
|
A beholder:
| |
| Reference | EvilHack 0.8.3 - monst.c, line 457 |
A beholder, e, is a type of monster that appears in EvilHack. The beholder is a large eye creature that can fly, and can be seen via infravision. Warning will always display an unseen beholder within its range as 5 regardless of its level.
A beholder has a slowing gaze, a sleep-inducing gaze, a disintegration gaze, a stoning gaze, a canceling gaze, and a powerful bite attack. Beholders possess cold resistance, shock resistance, poison resistance, and stoning resistance.
Eating a beholder corpse or tin conveys 2⁄25 additional poison resistance.
Generation
Randomly generated beholders are always created hostile, and are not a valid form for polymorph. A randomly generated beholder will be created asleep 4⁄5 of the time unless your character has the Amulet of Yendor at the time of its generation.
Beholders cannot be targeted for genocide unless Tal'Gath is killed.
Strategy
Beholders pose a significant threat from the time they begin generating randomly: most beholders will be created asleep, but an awakened one will direct its many deadly gazes at you, which can turn you to stone instantly, disintegrate you, or cancel your inventory among other undesirable effects - reflection has no effect on any of them. This also makes them impossibly deadly for pets that lack a means of resisting their gazes, and even pets with proper resistances are likely to be debilitated.
Thankfully, blinding yourself or the beholder will render its gaze attacks ineffective against you - blindness unfortunately cannot be used to detect one via telepathy, as beholders are mindless, making warning the ideal means of possibly detecting one. Neutralizing the beholder's gaze attacks leaves its strong bite as the sole remaining threat, which is much easier to mitigate and preferable by far to the many possibilities of instadeath. Beholders are an enticing genocide target, but require a character to reach the Castle, access the Hidden Dungeon and successfully kill Tal'Gath, forcing them to remain thoroughly prepared for their threat in the interim.
Origin
The beholder is a well-known creature from Dungeons & Dragons, and is one of the franchise's most iconic original creations. Beholders have spherical bodies with a single large eye, ten smaller eyes on stalks above it, and a mouth full of teeth. The smaller eyes are used for offense or defense; each one has a different magical ability. Beholders are typically hostile to other creatures, and often hostile to one another.
Encyclopedia entry
The beholder is the stuff of nightmares. This creature,
also called the sphere of many eyes or the eye tyrant,
appears as a large orb dominated by a central eye and a
large toothy maw, has 10 smaller eyes on stalks sprouting
from the top of the orb. Among adventurers, beholders are
known as deadly adversaries.
[ Monstrous Manual, AD&D 2nd edition ]
